'Odd Couple' To Open Season Of Classic Plays

Entertainment

KISSIMMEE — You asked for it, you got it. The Osceola Players' 1991-92 season - a season of classics the community voted on - is opening tonight with the well-known Neil Simon comedy The Odd Couple.

In their 32nd season, the Players are getting back to the basics of community theater - producing an American theater classic utilizing mostly local talent.

''I think it's fun for the community to see people they know in a play when they come to their own community theater - they enjoy it more,'' said Ron Colburn, a Kissimmee native who cast locals Owen Todd, David Lawrence, Jeanie Oglesby, Debbie Williams, David Walczak and Scott Bailey.

After dismal audience attendance at their first four shows of last season and a shake-up in the administration of the Osceola Center for the Arts, the Players looked to the public for guidance in picking the plays.

Four of the five shows slated for this season - The Odd Couple, The Music Man, Mousetrap and South Pacific - were winners of this spring's ''Pick the Plays'' campaign.

Was it a challenge to breath life into a 30-year-old play?

''I grant you, it's an old play, but believe me, when you hear Simon's words, he's funny. The lines themselves breathe life into the show.''

The production's costumer and Colburn's wife, Diane, also had trepidations about the age of the play.

''I was afraid the play would be dated,'' Diane Colburn said. ''But the play itself has remained funny. The humor and the characters in the play are still funny because it's about human nature.''

Colburn had fun looking through old sewing patterns from the mid-1960s to create costumes for the play's two female characters, a couple of swinging bachelorette sisters.

The Pigeon sisters - Gwendolyn and Cecily - are dressed in mini-skirts and sport beehive hairdos.

The six male characters, including the title roles of Felix Unger and Oscar Madison, didn't call for quite as much creativity, said Colburn.

For those whose only frame of reference for The Odd Couple is the 1970s sitcom starring Jack Klugman and Tony Randall, the plot of the play goes something like this:

The Neil Simon classic revolves around a group of six men - poker buddies who probably met in the military. One night the men gather in the apartment/pig sty of Oscar Madison.

Oscar is a terrific sports reporter who wasn't such a terrific husband to his wife Blanche, who divorced him, took the kids and moved to California.

Late to arrive is the always punctual Felix Unger, a news writer for CBS. The men learn that Unger has just separated from his wife. When he does arrive at Oscar's apartment, the suicidal Felix, played by Richard Foley, is scarcely allowed to go to the bathroom alone.

Oscar and Felix decide to room together, but soon the patterns of their own disastrous marriages begin to reappear, and Madison decides to ask Felix to leave.

Oscar and Felix realize that although incompatible as roommates, their friendship can continue as before.

It's not an unhappy ending, said Parker Godwin, who plays Oscar Madison.

In fact, in the final scene, Oscar is picking up his apartment, a subtle legacy from his time spent with the meticulous Felix.

''Oscar actually learns something,'' Godwin said. ''He learns that you have to change and learn to accommodate.''

Felix, on the other hand, stays unchanged. As Murray the Cop says, ''People will always be throwing Felix out.''

But he's not an unlikable fellow, Godwin said.

''He's an intellectual, neurotic wacko,'' said Godwin, but a likable wacko. He has a real maternal side, and loves to fuss over people and take care of them.

The play is one of Neil Simon's earliest works. According to Godwin, The Odd Couple isn't a strong ''message'' play.

If the audience comes away with anything, it should be that you can still like or love someone but just not be able to live with them, Godwin said.